Gauging the air quality of New York: a non-linear Nexus between COVID-19 and nitrogen dioxide emission

Sarfraz, Muddassar; Shehzad, Khurram; Farid, Awais

doi:10.1007/s11869-020-00870-2

Cited by 32 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…It vehemently rejects the null hypothesis of no cointegration (F-statistics < lower bound critical value). F-statistics significance at a 1% level confirms the cointegration occurrence for a long-run relationship between CO 2 emission and COVID-19 with its determinants (Katrakilidis & Trachanas, 2012 ; Sarfraz et al, 2018 , 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2017 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 65%

Modeling the relationship between carbon emissions and environmental sustainability during COVID-19: a new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration approach

Sarfraz¹,

Mohsin

Naseem

et al. 2021

Environ Dev Sustain

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The study aims to examine the CO 2 emissions by considering the implication of COVID-19 under strict lockdown in India. The nonlinear (asymmetric) relationship is investigated between CO 2 emission and COVID-19 with its specific determinants. The positive and negative asymmetries of COVID-19 determinants are also captured by using econometric techniques. The daily data series of CO 2 emission, new confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, and lockdown as dummy variables from January 30, 2020, to December 1, 2020, for India is analyzed by employing the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model. This research revealed a significant nonlinear relationship between CO 2 emission and COVID-19. The bound test and asymmetric coefficients are confirmed by the variables' long- and short-run relationships. The dynamic multiplier graphs present that India's strict lockdown due to the rapid increase in COVID-19 patients significantly reduces toxic gas emissions, especially CO 2 emissions. This asymmetric relationship has been proficiently declared that unhealthy public routine, extra traffic, and unhygienic gases released in the air become the reason for environmental destruction. The lockdown is practically imposed for specific periods and reasons, contributing to reducing toxic emissions, but it is not a permanent solution for environmental sustainability. The government of India, policymakers, and environmentalists should make people aware of unhealthy and environmentally envying activities and policies and long-term applicable strategies should be designed to upgrade the environment's quality.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 65%

Modeling the relationship between carbon emissions and environmental sustainability during COVID-19: a new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration approach

Sarfraz¹,

Mohsin

Naseem

et al. 2021

Environ Dev Sustain

Self Cite

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“…Many countries have imposed lockdown policies to close schools, workplace, public transport, and their international borders. It has been reported that these lockdown policies have brought some positive impacts towards the environment at the city or country level ( Filonchyk et al, 2020 ; Lau et al, 2020 ; Sarfraz et al, 2020 ; Siddiqui et al, 2020 ; Tobias et al, 2020 ). This study evaluated these impacts of COVID-19 pandemic towards the global NO 2 dynamics based on data from 187 countries/regions.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The whole country became unusually quiet in February, which has always been a peak travelling season due to the Chinese New Year. The lockdowns of cities have been widely reported to bring significant positive impacts towards the environment, particularly on air quality, including sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) and fine particles (PM 2.5 ) ( Filonchyk et al, 2020 ; Lancet Planet Health, 2020 ; Lau et al, 2020 ; Le Quere et al, 2020 ; Sarfraz et al, 2020 ; Tobias et al, 2020 ; Wang and Wang, 2020 ; Zhao et al, 2020 ). As the anthropogenic NO 2 is highly related to fossil fuel combustion from various transport modes, including vehicular traffic, marine shipping and commercial aircraft, the quarantine policies have resulted in a significant drop of NO 2 between late January and early March 2020 by 22.8 μg/m 3 in Wuhan alone and 12.9 μg/m 3 for the whole of China ( Agudelo-Castaneda et al, 2020 ; Herndon et al, 2004 ; Kaminska, 2019 ; Lancet Planet Health, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2020 ; Wang and Su, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global association between satellite-derived nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and lockdown policies under the COVID-19 pandemic

Zhang

Lin

Wei

et al. 2021

Science of The Total Environment

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The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected various aspects of life, at different levels and in different countries on almost every continent. In response, many countries have closed their borders and imposed lockdown policies, possibly bringing benefits to people's health with significantly less emission from air pollutants. Currently, most studies or reports are based on local observations at the city or country level. There remains a lack of systematic understanding of the impacts of different lockdown policies on the air quality from a global perspective. This study investigates the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic towards global air quality through examining global nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) dynamics from satellite observations between 1 January and 30 April 2020. We used the Apriori algorithm, an unsupervised machine learning method, to investigate the association among confirmed cases of COVID-19, NO 2 column density, and the lockdown policies in 187 countries. The findings based on weekly data revealed that countries with new cases adopted various lockdown policies to stop or prevent the virus from spreading whereas those without tended to adopt a wait-and-see attitude without enforcing lockdown policies. Interestingly, decreasing NO 2 concentration due to lockdown was associated with international travel controls but not with public transport closure. Increasing NO 2 concentration was associated with the “business as usual” strategy as evident from North America and Europe during the early days of COVID-19 outbreak (late January to early February 2020), as well as in recent days (in late April) after many countries have started to resume economic activities. This study enriches our understanding of the heterogeneous patterns of global associations among the COVID-19 spreading, lockdown policies and their environmental impacts on NO 2 dynamics.

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“…Further, Pata (2020) studied the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on environmental pollution in eight different US cities and found that the ongoing pandemic decreased the PM 2.5 emission in the US. Similarly, Sarfraz et al (2020) investigated the relationship between COVID-19 and NO 2 concentration level in New York City and revealed that environmental quality significantly improved during the pandemic. Moreover, Agarwal et al (2020) analyzed the influence of lockdown measures on air pollution of six megacities of India and six cities in China and concluded that air pollution in considered cities reduced drastically.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global, continental, and national variation in PM2.5, O3, and NO2 concentrations during the early 2020 COVID-19 lockdown

Hong

Zhang

et al. 2021

Atmospheric Pollution Research

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Lockdowns implemented in response to COVID-19 have caused an unprecedented reduction in global economic and transport activity. In this study, variation in the concentration of health-threatening air pollutants (PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and O 3 ) pre- and post-lockdown was investigated at global, continental, and national scales. We analyzed ground-based data from >10,000 monitoring stations in 380 cities across the globe. Global-scale results during lockdown (March to May 2020) showed that concentrations of PM 2.5 and NO 2 decreased by 16.1% and 45.8%, respectively, compared to the baseline period (2015–2019). However, O 3 concentration increased by 5.4%. At the continental scale, concentrations of PM 2.5 and NO 2 substantially dropped in 2020 across all continents during lockdown compared to the baseline, with a maximum reduction of 20.4% for PM 2.5 in East Asia and 42.5% for NO 2 in Europe. The maximum reduction in O 3 was observed in North America (7.8%), followed by Asia (0.7%), while small increases were found in other continents. At the national scale, PM 2.5 and NO 2 concentrations decreased significantly during lockdown, but O 3 concentration showed varying patterns among countries. We found maximum reductions of 50.8% for PM 2.5 in India and 103.5% for NO 2 in Spain. The maximum reduction in O 3 (22.5%) was found in India. Improvements in air quality were temporary as pollution levels increased in cities since lockdowns were lifted. We posit that these unprecedented changes in air pollutants were mainly attributable to reductions in traffic and industrial activities. Column reductions could also be explained by meteorological variability and a decline in emissions caused by environmental policy regulations. Our results have implications for the continued implementation of strict air quality policies and emission control strategies to improve environmental and human health.

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Gauging the air quality of New York: a non-linear Nexus between COVID-19 and nitrogen dioxide emission

Cited by 32 publications

References 16 publications

Modeling the relationship between carbon emissions and environmental sustainability during COVID-19: a new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration approach

Modeling the relationship between carbon emissions and environmental sustainability during COVID-19: a new evidence from asymmetric ARDL cointegration approach

Global association between satellite-derived nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and lockdown policies under the COVID-19 pandemic

Global, continental, and national variation in PM2.5, O3, and NO2 concentrations during the early 2020 COVID-19 lockdown

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